Future Junior Detective
by thinktink2
Summary: Sometimes you find breaks in cases from the most unlikely of sources. Part of the "Coming to Terms" sphere; taking place during "Living with the Decision"


AN: For Midnightjen, because she's the best.

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"Hello."

"Hello," he thought he heard a politely disinterested voice that sounded suspiciously like Diana's say.

"Can I help you?"

"No," it said simply to the well-meaning officer who had asked that question, and yes, that definitely sounded like his daughter's. "Hi Daddy!" He heard next to his side, confirming it.

He looked away from the conversation he was having with Wu and Hank to find Diana standing at his hip, big smile on her face.

"Hey sweetheart," he said, looking around for Adalind and Kelly, but only found Elizabeth instead. "Elizabeth," he acknowledged with some surprise, straightening. She gave him a slight nod, eyeing him thoughtfully and Nick wasn't sure he wanted to be the subject of her scrutiny.

One, he was fairly sure she had hit on him, twice now, which was weird for so many reasons, not the least of which she was his boss' mother. She was also a very powerful Hexenbiest, and he was a Grimm, and then there was the fact she was his kid's grandmother, although she barely looked as though she might qualify as Renard's older sibling, much less his mother. Then there was the fact Nick was currently embattled, along with Adalind, in a rather increasingly bitter custody fight over Diana with her son. Not to mention his whole relationship with Adalind. And Elizabeth thinking of him like that gave him the heebies, just to name a few.

"Detective," Elizabeth replied coolly, though Nick thought he saw a smile turning at her lips. She liked the fact she unsettled him—it annoyed him really—and Nick turned his focus back to Diana who was busy giving him a hug. He patted her back a couple of times and she pulled away, smiling brightly at Wu and Hank, who each offered harried, polite smiles. She squeezed between them, intent on reaching the rolling corkboard which housed the information they had collected on the case they were working, including some rather graphic victims' photos.

"Just—wait, hang on—" Nick said, snatching her up from the floor and into his arms, turning her away from the murder scenes. "That's not for you," he said to her, and she gave him a measuring look.

"Why can't I look at it?"

"Because, it's not meant for you."

"Everybody else can see it," she said.

"I don't want you looking at it, okay?" Nick said, depositing her in his chair, which at least had the advantage of having her back facing the corkboard, positioned as it was between Hank's and Wu's desks. Until she spun it around, that is.

"Why not?"

Nick suppressed a huff of aggravation.

"Because I said so."

"Ah, the song of my youth," Wu said, and Nick gave him a look of warning, turning the chair back away, as he stepped back over to them. A moment later Diana appeared at his side again.

Elizabeth didn't bother suppressing the smirk this time.

Nick stared at Diana with a look of consternation, who grinned beatifically back and began inching her way back to the corkboard, prompting Nick to heft her up again in an attempt to slow her forward progress. Hank heaved a sigh, perhaps sensing a slow down in their forward progress in discussing the case, as well.

"Not that I'm not happy to see you," Nick began, "but what are you doing here? Why aren't you with your mom?" Nick asked and looked at Elizabeth for the answer.

"I wanted to see you," Diana answered anyway.

"Well, thank you," Nick said, "You would have seen me at home in a few hours," he told her.

"I wanted to see you sooner," she added.

"I appreciate that," Nick replied, planting a kiss on her cheek. "However, I have a lot of work to do, however much I'd like to spend time with you."

"I can help!"

"I don't think—yes, you can," he said at her look of profound disappointment, spying an object on his desk. "You can sit here, at my desk and organize…my paper clips," he finished, dumping out the roughly hundred or so colored clips onto the surface of his desk.

Diana wrinkled her nose in disgust at the task and gave him a look, clearly borrowed from Adalind's closet of less than impressed expressions.

"See, all the different colors mixed together? It's a mess," Nick told her and the look of censure deepened. He settled her back in his chair and pushed it up to the desk. "Stay here," he added and Nick heaved another breath and returned to the others, Elizabeth's brow raised in an expression of censure of her own.

"Aren't you supposed to drop Diana off with Adalind?" Nick asked her, irritated with the looks.

"She was adamant about seeing her father," Elizabeth returned, "I didn't realize she meant you, too," and Nick raised his eyebrows at this.

"The captain's not here," Nick said.

"He got called to a meeting with the mayor," Hank told her.

"That's okay, we can wait in his office, can't we darling?" Elizabeth said, looking at Diana who, Nick noted with aggravated surprise, was standing at his elbow next to him again.

"I want to stay with daddy," she told Elizabeth, arm clutching Nick's waist as though Elizabeth might drag her bodily away, and given Elizabeth's remark to him, Nick wondered how aware she was that Diana readily referred to Nick as her father.

"Nick's very busy, my love, we should leave him be to get his work done," and Diana shook her head and moved around Nick, still clinging to him, to stand between him and the guys.

"He might be a while," Wu added, referring to Renard. "Visits with the mayor aren't usually short ones."

"I talked to him a few moments ago. He indicated he would arrive presently," Elizabeth replied, and Hank raised his eyebrows and Wu looked at he and Nick worriedly.

"That can't be good," Wu said to them.

"Short visits with the mayor never are," Hank said. "We'd better make some progress on our case," Hank said to Nick and they turned to look at the board again.

"Diana!" Nick exclaimed, when he spotted her blond head in front of it. "What did I just tell you?"

Diana glanced back at him as though she had no idea what he was talking about.

"Who's that?" she asked pointing to an autopsy photo of a body, which fortunately was only a close up of the victim's neck, where a silver necklace with a beaded pendant, rested against a neck that showed some faint burns where the chain touched the skin, indicating the metal in the necklace had been hot.

"No one," he said, grabbing a hold of her again. "Why don't you go with your grandmother," he added, trying to lead her over to Elizabeth before Diana snatched her arm away, and wrapped both her arms around Nick's waist.

"I want to stay with you," she said, voice muffled against the side of his hip.

"You're not listening to me," Nick said.

"I am, too," she said, still muffled against him.

"I told you to stay at my desk," he replied, waving a hand as he turned slightly to indicate it. He frowned, brows merging together when he spotted the paperclips, lined up perfectly along the surface, stacked neatly by color. He snapped his head back and looked down again at his daughter, who was peeking an eye out at him, face and nose pressed against him. She tried to hide a smile, but she hadn't mastered the art of maintaining a straight face yet.

"See?" she said to him pointedly, looking up at him with her chin pressed against his hip and grinning proudly and he glanced around the department, looking to see who was close by.

"Did you use your powers?" he asked her in a low voice and she pressed her face back against him and rolled her head around, indicating neither no nor yes, probably to not be caught in a lie.

"Diana," he said warningly.

"I wanna stay with you," she said again, grip tightening on him momentarily.

"Diana," Elizabeth said. "Come, you can wait in your father's office," she said.

"Nick's my daddy," she mumbled into his jeans, and Nick tried not to stiffen as he felt Elizabeth's sharp eyes fix on him. Crap, just what he needed, having it out with his soon to be step-daughter's grandmother—a rather powerful hexenbiest, he might do well to remember—about his role in her life, here at the station, and Elizabeth looked like she might not be finding him so attractive anymore, eyes flashing angrily, perhaps to remind him about knowing his place in Diana's life when the Captain blew in, looking perturbed.

Swell. The meeting with mayor had not gone well, and Renard would be expecting a report from them, one that indicated progress, and he was about to be disappointed with Hank's and Nick's response.

"Mother," Renard said, momentarily diverted. "How are you?"

Elizabeth pulled her fiery eyes from Nick and offered a warm smile to her son.

"Fine, love. How did your meeting go with the mayor?" and Nick flashed an annoyed look at her, Hank too, how it went with the mayor evident to everyone in the room. It was also evident she knew that and was sticking it to Nick because of her anger over his and Diana's closeness, or rather, Diana's dismissal of her biological father.

Renard fixed a pair of fiery eyes of his own, clearly inherited from his mother, on his two detectives and frowned. He opened his mouth, preparing to lay into them, Nick suspected, when he caught sight of Diana attached to him.

"Diana," Renard said, as though surprised to see her, despite the fact that Elizabeth had supposedly made him aware of their intent to come to the station to see him. Diana peeked another eye out, meeting Renard's eye. "What are you doing?"

"Helping daddy," she said, voice muffled, and Nick suppressed an eye roll.

"I see," Renard said coolly, looking back up at Nick. "Great, I can't wait to hear about all the progress you've made."

"Yeah, uh, well we've gone over everything we've got so far," Hank said, taking point, as he had been over the last few weeks as Nick and Renard limited their exposure to one another to glares and a handful of curt remarks.

"And?"

"…and we're still waiting on a the tox screen report from the coroner to verify how exactly they suffocated with no obvious signs of trauma—"

"—And we're still trying to locate one of the witnesses," Wu added.

"—so until we find him, we're basically stuck," Hank finished and Renard crossed his arms over his chest.

"So you've got nothing?"

"Not until we uncover the witness," Wu confirmed.

"The mayor," Renard began heatedly, "is breathing down my neck about solving this case and we don't have anything? What all have you been doing?"

"Working the case," Nick retorted and Renard transferred his glare to him.

"I helped organize daddy's paperclips," Diana piped up, pointing proudly to Nick's desk and Nick pressed her head back against him to quiet her. Renard looked down at her, and then Nick's desk, where she was indicating, and he snorted, unimpressed.

"Well, I'm glad to see you're using your time on the case wisely," he snapped to Nick. Diana's face fell, and her arms dropped away from Nick. Nick felt his anger start to rise at the implication he was wasting time and opened his mouth to shoot it off at Renard as Renard turned away in disgust.

"I suggest you revisit your evidence and come up with something, because I told the mayor my detectives had it well in hand," he said to Hank before marching into his office. "Mother," he said as he stalked by her.

Elizabeth held out her hand for Diana. She reluctantly and dejectedly shuffled over to her, taking it, and they both disappeared with Renard.

Nick took a measured breath in and out and shook his head in frustration, Wu and Hank raising their brows at each other, before Wu left, muttering about following up on the tox screen.

"We better come up with something fast," Hank said, following Nick to their desks. Nick took a seat, clicking on his mouse and glancing at the stacks of colorized paperclips. He sighed again and nodded.

"I'll go through the witness statements again, see if anything stands out," he said and Hank nodded, glancing at Renard's office.

"I'll see what else I can find out about the victims' relationships to one another," Hank said. "Hopefully something will shake loose.

Nick nodded, and began to read through the statements, leaning forward and studying them carefully. He jumped in surprise, fifteen minutes later when his elbow bumped into Diana's hand, gripping the armrest of his chair.

He suppressed a sigh, the big blue eyes, Adalind's beautiful eyes, boring into him, looking forlorn, and he cast a glance behind him, noticing Elizabeth and Renard engaged in a serious conversation.

"Can I help?" Diana asked him, and Nick suppressed another sigh and slipped his arm around her shoulders, guiding her around the side of the chair to the front, where he pulled her onto his lap, and resumed his perusal of the witness statements.

"What are you looking at?" she asked him, playing with the watch on his wrist of the hand he had wrapped around her.

"Witness statements," Nick said.

"Why?"

"Because we're trying to solve our case and we need to make sure we've studied everything carefully in case we missed a clue," he told her as his phone rang. Adalind's name displayed on the screen and Nick wondered if he'd get anything accomplished today without interruption. "It's mommy," Nick told his daughter and Diana's face brightened.

"Tell her I'm helping," she said to Nick and Nick nodded distractedly as he picked up.

"Hey," he said, and winced when he caught the end of Adalind sharply reprimanding their son. "Are you home?"

"Hey," she said, a bit breathlessly back, "Kelly! What did mommy say?" He heard Kelly respond, a rather smart allecky retort for someone who was still mastering the art of intelligible words and Adalind breathed in suddenly, and expelled a loud breath of air. "Kelly," she warned. There was another squawk of indignation Nick registered and then, to Nick, "hold on," from Adalind.

"Give me the mallet," she demanded and Nick's brow furrowed, wondering what the hell was going on on the other side of the phone conversation.

"No!" he heard clearly in response, one word in Kelly's vocabulary he had mastered the pronunciation of at an early age.

"Kelly, give mommy the mallet. _Now_."

She must have come away with it as the next sound he heard was Kelly's unhappy wailing, drowning out Adalind's exasperated sigh.

"Sorry," she said when she picked up the conversation again.

"Hi mommy!" Diana cut in, interrupting Nick's intended response.

"Is that Diana?" Adalind asked him in surprise.

"Yup, she's here. At the station," Nick said.

"I'm helping daddy, mommy," Diana said excitedly, and Nick pressed the phone closer to his ear, and wondered why he was bothering to attempt to have a private conversation with Adalind.

"What is she doing with you? I thought she was with her dad, or should I say, Elizabeth?" Adalind added condescendingly with a disgusted snort.

Oh, yeah, that was why. To avoid Diana hearing comments like that.

"Nope, she's right here. With me. On my lap. As I go through witness statements. Trying to solve my case. Helping," he added, managing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Diana grinned at him.

"Did they just leave her with you? Where's Elizabeth? Do you need me to come get her?" Adalind said, sighing, Kelly still wailing in the background. "I'll trade you children," she added as Kelly must have come closer to her, since the volume of the wailing increased dramatically.

"Tempting," Nick said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice the second time around.

"Kelly, mommy said no," Adalind told him, sounding aggravated, and Kelly bawled loudly, saying something Nick didn't catch in response.

"No, you can't have it," she said, and Nick inferred it was the mallet.

"Where the hell did he get a mallet? Not a real one?" Nick asked Adalind.

"Yes, a real one," Adalind retorted. "Monroe gave it to him. It's a little tiny thing, like a watch mallet or clock mallet, or gong or something, I don't know, but it still operates like a mallet. In related news you have some holes to fix in the wall when you get home."

"You mean Monroe has some holes to fix in the wall," Nick returned.

"Monroe will be busy fixing the holes in himself the next time I see him," Adalind muttered.

"I can help you with that," Nick told her. "I've got something that makes holes quite effectively. Roughly about the size of a nine millimeter or so." She snorted.

"Mommy," Diana interrupted loudly and Nick pulled the phone away from his ear and held it out in the hopes Diana would lower the volume as she spoke. No such luck.

"Mommy, I'm helping daddy with his case," she told Adalind and Nick heard Adalind respond, voice tinny with a polite, affected, happy curiosity. "It's got a silber krankheit," Diana told her enthusiastically.

"Uh, it does?" Nick said, looking at her in confusion, wondering what she was talking about.

"Where did you learn that term?" Adalind demanded, and Nick intuited Diana wasn't just making up nonsense.

"Nana," Diana replied, and Nick turned back to look at Elizabeth and Renard still deep in conversation. Elizabeth met his eyes through the blinds, looking displeased, and Nick turned his attention away from her and back to his daughter and Adalind.

"What?" he asked again.

"This is why I don't want her spending time with Elizabeth, Nick," Adalind whispered loudly, as though Diana wouldn't be able to hear and he hurriedly brought the phone back up to his ear so she wouldn't. Diana looked disappointed at this response, enthusiasm waning. "She's too young to be learning about such things. She has no reason to be learning about such things," Adalind amended angrily.

"What's a silber krankheit?" he asked them, looking at Diana who tried to slide off his lap and slink away, presumably back to Elizabeth and Renard, but Nick tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder and grabbed her before she moved away. He tugged her back onto his lap, almost dropping his phone. He fumbled with it and brought it back up to his ear where he only caught the last couple of words from Adalind.

"Say again," he said.

"Silver sickness, literally, but it refers to the type of amulet a certain kind of spell is cast with that poisons the victim through the skin, usually by making the lungs or the airway swell and close. Very painful way to die," Adalind said.

"It's a spell?" he asked and looked back at the corkboard.

"Part of it, yeah, I mean, the you need the amulet, too," Adalind said, "I mean this is exactly the type of thing I don't want Elizabeth teaching her," Adalind said, getting back to her dissatisfaction with Elizabeth and Diana having a relationship with her.

"Uh-huh," Nick replied and leaned back in his chair, and then forward, as he squinted at the board. He looked back at Diana.

"You saw the amulet?" he asked her. "On the victim?" He only recalled one wearing a necklace. Diana shrugged and nodded petulantly.

"She's not looking at crime scene photos with you, is she Nick?" Adalind cut in sharply.

"Of course not," he said, getting up carefully, Diana sliding off his lap, and following him as he went over to the corkboard. Hank turned in his chair to watch them. Diana pointed to the vic and the photo he caught her staring at earlier, before pointing with her slender little finger at another victim's photo. Nick squinted and peered closely.

"Thank goodness, I mean, she's a child, she doesn't need to be seeing those kinds of things," Adalind said.

"Uh-huh," Nick replied, eyebrows rising in surprise, when Diana tapped her finger on an amulet attached to a charm bracelet, and then the amulet in the pendant and Nick, once he spotted what he was looking at, and for, furiously began to track the other victims' crime scene photos for the same thing.

"She'll have nightmares." Adalind continued.

Diana excitedly pointed to the earrings on another victim, a long dangly type, with other beads and metals, that nearly brushed the collarbone, but Nick could make out the amulet among the design. Hank rose up from his chair and joined him.

"Uh-huh," Nick murmured.

"What are we looking for?" Hank asked him.

"The amulet. This," Nick said, pointing.

"Nick? Are you listening to me?"

"Are all the victims wearing one?" Hank asked.

"Yup. See?" Diana chirped helpfully, pointing to a complicated looking broach, pinned to the clothing of the last victim. Hank and Nick squinted and Nick made out the peculiar design of the amulet among the arrangement. Nick looked down at Diana, mouth fumbling for words.

"Nick!" Adalind snapped, apparently having heard Diana. "Tell me she's not looking at photos of dead people with you!"

"Uh, she wasn't," he hedged, and Diana smiled happily at him as Adalind reacted loudly in his ear.

"She _wasn't?_ What do you mean she _wasn't_? Nick!"

"Where do you find an amulet like that? How do you get one?" Hank asked him and Nick shrugged and looked at his daughter for an answer who shrugged in response, looking pleased to be at the center of their attention.

"All the victims have one. Someone gave it to them. Too much of a coincidence they all just happened to buy something that had the same exact thing," Nick declared, looking at the amulet again. "I mean this is very unique."

"Yeah, whoever gave it to them wanted them dead," Hank said to him. "Our missing witness," Hank added flatly.

"What?"

"Makes and sells jewelry," Hank said, and Nick recalled going over that information in one of the statements they had taken.

Nick realized Adalind was still talking loudly in his ear.

"Nick? Nick! Nick!"

"I gotta go," he said to her and absently clicked off the phone without waiting for a response and focused on Diana.

"Diana, honey, what else did Elizabeth tell you about silber krankheit?"

Diana shrugged, turning back to the photos.

"How did you come to learn about them?" Hank asked her and Nick kneeled down when Diana shrugged again, perhaps realizing what she said might be used against her, or her father or grandmother, more accurately, in a court of law deciding custody over her.

"It's okay," Nick told her. "You can tell me. I'm not going to get mad, I promise."

"Mommy's mad," Diana countered.

"Mommy's…worried," Nick said, instead, because, yeah, Adalind was pissed. "She wants to make sure you're safe, and you are," he said. "She'll see that."

He hoped.

"The lady who visited nana with the big cat," and Nick managed to keep the grimace from surfacing at the words _big cat_. After everything that had happened with Juliette he couldn't say he was a fan of felines. Ridiculous really, since Adalind, the person he was currently living quite happily in sin with, had cast a spell over said cat and had made it act the way it had.

Still.

What was it with Hexenbiests and cats? Was it possible to be a practicing witch and _not_ own one? Actually, come to think of it, he didn't recall Diana ever mentioning Elizabeth having one, so maybe it was possible. He shook his head slightly and focused on Diana.

"What lady?"

"She had one, she brought it to nana. When I asked nana what it was she said I shouldn't touch it, and it was a silber krankheit."

"Did Nana do anything with it?"

"Yes, I discharged the spell that had been cast on it."

Nick twisted his head to look at her, Grimm instinct warning him (a bit late, perhaps) a potential threat was behind him and to look sharp. Elizabeth smirked slightly.

"Could you tell who cast it?" Nick asked her.

"Where did the woman get it?" Hank cut in.

"Who was the woman?" Nick interjected and Renard joined them a second later, stepping out of his office to find his two detectives crouched down on the ground with his daughter, and his mother, all crowded together.

"What's going on? Shouldn't you guys be working? Diana why hasn't your mother come to pick you up yet?" And Nick flashed his eyes in annoyance at him.

Elizabeth held up a carefully manicured hand, as ageless as she was. "One question at a time, gentlemen, please," Elizabeth admonished. She fixed her eyes on Nick.

"I couldn't tell the person who cast it," she told him, "but whoever it was lacks experience. The spell was easy to discharge. The woman, an…acquaintance of mine, got it from her daughter. She recognized as a silber krankheit and what that meant. She immediately brought it to me to discharge the spell."

"Where did her daughter get it?" Hank cut in.

"Who's her daughter?" Nick asked.

"I'll give you her name and address," Elizabeth told them. "My understanding was it was a gift to the daughter as part of an initiation process."

"Initiation process? Like for a sorority or something?" Hank asked.

"That's one example. There are other societies that use them."

"A silber krankheit?" Renard interjected, looking at his mother and then Nick.

"All the victims are wearing one," Nick said, pointing to the board.

"I saw it!" Diana chimed in and Nick turned back to her as Renard focused on her in surprise.

"Yes, you did. You did good," Nick told her, kneeling back down beside her and pulling her close and giving her a kiss on her cheek. She beamed at him.

"Very good," Elizabeth acknowledged with a smile of her own. Renard looked at the board, stepping closer and Diana pointed to the amulet on each victim again.

"You're a very clever little girl," he said, looking at his daughter in wonder, and Nick watched him carefully, patting Diana's back as she slung an arm around Nick's neck and leaned against him. She looked proud of herself, very much like Adalind when she was feeling particularly confident about an accomplishment, and Nick kissed her cheek again and picked her up.

"Talk to that girl," Renard told them and Hank nodded, looking at Elizabeth.

"I'll get you her information."

Nick carried his daughter over to his desk as Hank took down the information from Elizabeth, setting Diana in his chair where she stood on the seat and grinned at him. He nodded a moment later when Elizabeth stopped to say goodbye to her granddaughter, offering a cool salutation to him as well and Diana and Nick watched her leave before Diana turned back to him, unable to stop beaming.

"Keep that up and you'll make detective before your tenth birthday," Nick told her and the smile intensified and he grinned back. "You're clever just like your mother," he told her. "There's going to be no living with you now, is there?"

Diana shook her head, bouncing on the seat in excitement and Nick shook his, too, amused at her behavior. The smiles faded from both their faces when Adalind blew in ten minutes later, clearly having missed Elizabeth, Nick silently thanked, clutching a temperamental-looking Kelly, looking fit to be tied herself. Nick quirked an eyebrow at her in silent question.

"You hung up on me!" she snapped at him, and he sobered.

"No I didn't," he said.

"Yes," she ground out, "you did. I was talking to you and all of a sudden I was talking to air!"

"Not exactly," he amended. "I said I had to go," he reminded her, and she gave him a look indicating she didn't think that absolved him from guilt in his abrupt departure in their phone conversation.

"Mommy!" Diana interrupted, faintly thrumming with excitement.

"Diana! You're okay," she said when she caught sight of her daughter.

"Of course she's okay," Renard replied, overhearing, breaking away from his conversation with Wu and Hank. "She's in the middle of a police station," and Adalind transferred her unreceptive gaze to Renard and Nick prayed he would take the hint and leave, because she was looking for someone to lay into and as much as he would prefer it was anyone but Nick, Renard made too easy a target.

"Mommy! I helped daddy with his case!" Diana exclaimed.

"Yes, about that," Adalind said, glaring at Nick as she turned to face him.

"Yes, she did," Renard interrupted, as though he had done anything but arrive at the end of it, smiling at Diana.

"I saw the silber krankheit!" Diana said, and Adalind transferred her glare from Nick, momentarily, to Renard.

"Whose mother taught her about silber krankheit?" she asked Renard with clenched teeth, looking well and pissed.

"Whose _fiancé_ showed her the board?" Renard returned and Nick huffed a sigh and threw a glare of his own at Renard. He caught sight of Diana, looking deflated that her mother wasn't sharing in her achievement, and disappointed she wasn't the focus of either parent's attention. Nick sobered, pulling her into his arms.

Adalind made a face at Renard and Renard smirked and left, leaving Adalind with only one target for her aggravation: Nick.

"Before you get too upset," Nick said to Adalind, hoping to diffuse the situation, and she pursed her lips. "I think it's important to note that one: Diana is perfectly okay, and two: Miss Junior Detective here gave us a huge break in our case," Nick said, raising his eyebrows pointedly, indicating their daughter's dejected expression as he planted another kiss against Diana's cheek. "I might have a new partner here in a few years," and Diana's face erupted into a smile again. "One that actually pulls her share of the weight," he added loudly so Hank could hear. Hank straightened from the address he was mapping out and gave him a look.

"Excuse me?" he said, offended.

Nick turned back to Adalind, telling Diana, "Don't listen to him, he's just jealous." And the grin widened further, eyes purpling slightly with emotion.

"I see," Adalind said, making a conscious effort to push aside her anger and concern and focus on her daughter.

" _You_ solved the case?" she prompted, and Diana nodded.

"She didn't solve it," Hank interjected, "She provided a big clue—" and Nick kicked the side of his desk for him to shut up when Diana turned to look at him.

"Still," Hank changed course quickly, "It's pretty significant," and Diana turned back from Hank, still smiling and looked at her mother.

"That's…incredible!" Adalind said, managing a believable smile, but in the wake of the high-wattage grin Diana was sporting it was hard not to reciprocate. "Wow! You'll have to tell me about it on the way home," she told Diana and Nick set her on her feet and Diana skipped over to her mother. Adalind wrapped an arm around Diana, running her fingers through her blonde hair as Diana smiled up at her. "Sounds very exciting," Adalind said with a kiss on the top of her head and Diana nodded. "I can't wait to hear all about it."

"I've got the address and location," Hank said and Nick nodded. Nick snagged his jacket off the back of his chair and herded Adalind and his children ahead of him. Her eyes flashed, catching sight of the corkboard as she turned.

"We've got some things to discuss later, too," she muttered, low enough that only he heard. He nodded, a sigh of resignation just barely contained, hand brushing against the small of her back, before raising it up to tickle Kelly.

"How's my boy?" he asked Kelly as Hank gathered his things behind him and followed. Kelly looked at him with mournful eyes, still looking put out about his day.

Adalind flashed another look, this time of exasperation.

"He's definitely a chip off his father's block," she said. "Why is it he has to wield everything he gets his hands on as though it's some sort of a deadly weapon?"

"How many holes did he put in the wall before you took it away?" Nick asked.

"Four," she sighed, and Nick shook his head. "He finally stopped crying about it halfway to the station."

"You're not going to smile for your dad," he asked Kelly and Kelly laid his head against Adalind's shoulder and stared back at him as though, after everything he'd been through, Nick must be joking. Kelly was always a touch dramatic about things.

"Kelly, my man," Hank said in greeting, catching up to them, and, after a moment Kelly lifted his head and held his arms out to Hank to be picked up.

"Nice to be loved by my own flesh and blood," Nick commented.

"He's probably thinking the same thing," Adalind replied. "I told him Daddy would have something to say about what he had done when he saw him."

"Monroe's walls, Kelly. Mo-mo's walls, not mommy and daddy's, especially where daddy has to fix them."

"Yes, that's exactly the talk I hoped you would give him," Adalind said dryly.

"He's two, what conversation do you want me to have with him?"

Adalind rolled her eyes and shook her head, stepping onto the elevator when it arrived, Diana skipping in beside her.

"Where are you going?" she asked when she noticed Hank and Nick following.

"We've got a lead on the case thanks to you that we need to follow up on."

"Can I come with you?" Diana asked, bouncing over to stand before him breathlessly.

"'Fraid not. This is senior detective business," Nick said and Hank nodded in agreement. "Time for you to go home with mommy and Kelly, and leave the rest of the case to us." Diana nodded disappointedly, and Hank handed Kelly across to Adalind, noticing they were about to reach the parking garage. Nick intercepted the pass and held his son.

"You," he said, and Kelly looked at him, the very picture of ill-treated and misunderstood. "Honestly, if you laid it on any thicker I'd be suffocating under the weight of this performance. Be good for mommy," he added, placing a kiss on his son's chubby cheek, purposely tickling Kelly's face with his beard and mouth, until Kelly squirmed and reluctantly smiled. "That's better," Nick told him, giving him another kiss and handing him back to Adalind as they stepped off.

"Tell daddy bye," Adalind said to them.

"Bye daddy, bye Hank," Diana said and Hank paused, where he had started heading for their cruiser and waved.

"Bye daddy," Kelly said.

"Your daughter was brilliant today," Nick said to Adalind, holding the door open as she settled Kelly into his car seat and buckled him up. Diana had already plopped down on the seat opposite, and Nick checked to make sure the door was secure behind her, before looking over the roof of the car at his fiancé.

"Of course she was, she takes after me," Adalind sniffed, and he smiled and came around to her side to hold the driver side door open for her.

Well, he certainly wasn't going to give Renard credit for it.

"Love you guys, bye," Nick called to his kids though the opening. "Love you," he said to Adalind, turning to her.

"Uh-huh," Adalind said, pulling him close for a kiss. She paused, centimeters away from his mouth and said in a low voice, "I love you, but the next time either of my children see a crime scene photo it's going to be of your own mangled body while they're on the witness stand."

"Understood," Nick said, and Adalind pressed a kiss against him and let him go.


End file.
